1. Korean Online politics in an International perspectiveMaurice Vergeerwith the assistance of Yon Soo Lim, PhD and Se Jung Park, MA Presentation held at Neso, Seoul, South Korea, June 22, 2011 This research was supported by WCU (World Class University) program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (No. 515-82-06574).

2. Outline Introduction Online politics Korean online politics International perspective

3. WCU project Webometrics Institute, Yeungnam University Hyperlink analysis Professor Han Woo Park Chien-leng Hsu Content analysis and semantic network analysis Yon Soo Lim Se Jung Park

4. Politics in general Decline in voter turnout in elections Declining trust in politics and politicians in general Not a national problem, but an international one

7. Problem How to engage people into politics?

8. New campaign strategies

13. Several communication options Website communication Web feature analysis Blogging Online Social networking Cyworld Micro-blogging Twitter

14. Innovation hypothesis versus Normalisation hypothesis Equalisation hypothesis

15. Micro-blogging Twitter Launched in 2007 Social networking service Micro-blogging tool RenRen Me2Day Cyworld Plurk Facebook Linkedin

16. South Korean population: 50 million people The Netherlands: 17 million people 2.1 million South Korean users 400.000 Dutch users

17. General adoption rate of Twitter South Korea: 4.2% Netherlands: 2.4

18. Twitter in Korean parliament

19. Korean parliament Sampled all parliament members Including some that left in the last 14 months Data collection Official resources Dedicated software for downloading Twitter datausing a so-called API (applicationprogramming interface)

20. Adoption of Twitter Overall 64.7 percent adopted Twitter as a micro-blogging tool Grand National Party: 68.6% Democratic Party: 62.9% Other parties: 52.4%

21. Adoption of Twitter On average they signup to Twitter more than a year ago (i.e. 412 days) Grand National Party: 388 days ago Democratic Party: 445 days ago Other parties: 459 days ago

22. Male and female politicians subscribed to Twitter at about the same time Politicians with an MA degree subscribed to Twitter slightly earlier

23. Types of Twitter relations

28. Bivariateanalysis of Twitterbehavior

33. South Korea compared to the Netherlands

35. Results logistic regression of adoption of twitter

36. Results negative binomial regression analysis of Twitter activities

37. Results negative binomial regression analysis of Twitter activities

38. Results negative binomial regression analysis of Twitter activities

39. Results negative binomial regression analysis of Twitter activities

40. Conclusion Innovationornormalisation? Those in power (GNP) are lessactiveadopting and usingnew (social) media Long time membersthat have an account predominantlyuseit to createnetworks, not to communicatedirectly (i.e. tweet)

41. Koreanpoliticiansseem to usesocial media as social media Dutch politiciansseem to useTwitter as a mass media

42. Thankyouforyourattention Maurice Vergeer www.mauricevergeer.nl